Snow
by EllieF
Summary: Snow, winter ale, and a bit of holiday cheer. Near x Hal, and pretty shamelessly fluffy.


**ObDisclaimer:** Ohba's and Obata's, not mine!

**Notes:** I was in a weird mood when I couldn't sleep one night, and wanted to challenge myself with writing stuff I wouldn't otherwise write. I find it amusing that one of the only het pairings that could even exist seems cracky to me. But hey, it's the holidays, so kissing for everyone YEYS. Unbeta-ed because it's so short, but my writing process does include obsessive editing. :-)

**Snow**

It's been a long day and seems likely to be a longer night. Hal casts a quick look over the bank of monitors. Not a creature stirring, she thinks. Even this climate-controlled, perfectly-regulated sterility hasn't escaped the Christmas spirit. The tree—a real one—is up, and someone has stocked the mini refrigerator with champagne and a seasonal winter beer. Hal gets one of those and cracks it open, then goes to the couch. Kicks off her shoes, stretches, and takes a drink. It's nice, dark and nutmeg-scented.

She hears the whisper of stockinged feet on the bare floor. _I guess someone _is_ stirring_. She looks around.

"I couldn't sleep," Near says. He's wearing the same clothes he always does, and Hal, in a moment of tired giddiness, wonders if he got up and changed, and if so, from what? Transformers-print footie pajamas?

"Would you like anything?" she says.

He starts to shake his head, but stops. "Can I try a sip of that?"

"Sure." She holds out the bottle.

He takes a swig and makes a face somewhere between disgust and interest. Hal can't help but smile; it's easy to forget, sometimes, that he's only five years younger than she is.

"Is there more?"

She nods.

"May I have one?"

"Sure, why not?"

He pads to the mini-fridge. "You're not going to say I'm too young?"

"You want _me_ to play the responsible adult?"

Hal's not sure, but she thinks that gets a tiny grin.

Near comes back and holds the still-capped bottle out to her. "I don't know how to do it."

She pops it open with her keychain knife and hands it back, managing to keep a straight face this time.

"Thanks." He tips back another big swallow, sits on the couch opposite her, and rests his chin on his knee. "I don't like wine, but I think beer might be an acquired taste I could actually acquire."

"This _is_ the good stuff."

"Gevanni picked it out," Near says. He plucks a piece of origami paper from the stack on the table and starts folding something complicated that Hal can't identify yet. After a little while he puts the creature—a dragon—down and picks up his beer again.

Outside, the rain has turned to snow, and they sit for a while in comfortable silence, sipping their drinks, watching it. The city lights seem to twinkle and so does the snow: fat, wet flakes that will snarl traffic in a few hours. For now, though, it's beautiful. Even this late, there are taxis and cars, their lights and the lights of the freeway ramps like strung garlands.

"It's a strange Christmas this year," Near says, quietly, but with an undercurrent of the strain that has never quite left him since the Kira case began.

"Next year'll be better," Hal says. She even almost believes it.

"Yes." But he sighs, and sets his bottle—his empty bottle, Hal notices with mild alarm—aside. "Is it all right if I lean on you?"

"Of course."

Instead of resting against her shoulder as she half-expects, he curls up with his head in her lap.

Bemused, pleasantly fuzzy from ale on an empty stomach and only a handful of hours of sleep in the last seventy-two, Hal gives a mental shrug and lets her hand fall to stroke his hair. It's very soft and fine, unruly waves that would be a tangle if he kept it short: elf-locks, her grandmother would've called them.

"Do you mind being away from your family?" Near says.

_How does he _do_ that?_ "There's nothing to mind. My family's all gone."

"Hmm." It's almost a purr.

She looks down at him, her fingers still toying with his hair, almost of their own accord. She's always felt protective toward him, but isn't it a little weird, _petting_ a kid like this?

Not really a kid anymore, though. Sure, he's still small, but his face is starting to lose some of its unfinished prettiness, and she notices the lean line of his throat, his collarbone where the baggy shirt gaps open... Hal swallows, and fights a sudden crazy urge to bend and taste the shadows there.

"I think I might be drunk," Near says. "It's... interesting."

Hal's surprised for a moment that he doesn't seem to have noticed her distraction. "Even given that you never drink," she says, "you're probably just tipsy." She twirls a strand of his hair around her finger, watches it spring into a curl when she lets go.

"Well. That's all right, then. I've never been tipsy, but it's kind of nice, actually."

Hal wonders if he knows that his British accent, usually faint, has gotten more pronounced. Probably.

And maybe this is strange, but she doesn't mind. It's as though they're floating here in the snowfall, with the whole city as decoration, in a space carved out of normal life. As normal as life gets these days...

"I've never kissed anyone either. Or, you know. Anything else."

_He noticed after all_, she thinks.

"I don't think I'll ever really have time for that sort of thing. But I wonder about it sometimes."

Hal goes very still. _Am I supposed to offer? Hard to tell with him._

He sits up and looks at her. "Lidner?"

_Don't ask_, she tells him silently. _If you say it, it _will_ be too weird._

Really not a kid anymore. In the snow-filtered light he's all silvery: pale, rumpled hair and those eyes that always seem to see the things everyone else misses. One day, very soon, he's going to be stunning.

"Hal," he says, and it's not a question.

She's the one who feels unsure as she puts a hand on his shoulder to pull him closer, tilts her head and kisses him, very softly, really just resting her mouth against his. His lips are a bit chapped, not unpleasantly. He shifts up a little and returns the pressure. Hal doesn't dare open her eyes, but she can imagine his expression—the slightly amused one he gets when he's about to arrive at an answer he likes.

_This'll only happen once,_ she thinks. _It ought to be a real kiss._ So she licks at his lower lip, coaxing his mouth open, hears a little hitch in his breath that's probably way more of a turn-on than it should be.

He brushes his fingers across her cheekbone, deepening the kiss, and of course he's good at this even if he's never done it before. Hal relaxes her hands with a conscious effort so she won't drag him into her arms and tumble them both over.

Near eases away. "Oh," he says. His hair's even more mussed now, his face flushed, and Hal thinks _I did that_, with a weird sort of pride. He looks into her eyes, but his gaze flicks down to her lips in a way that reminds her that an eighteen-year-old boy who plays with robots is still an _eighteen-year-old boy_. She feels a blush that has nothing to do with alcohol rising in her own face.

Near frowns slightly, thoughtfully, and leans up and kisses her, as lightly as she did to him at first. It's a testing, teasing kiss, as if he means to memorize every millimeter of her lips with his own. Despite her control, Hal makes a small protesting murmur.

He all but crawls into her lap, slipping his hands into her hair, not teasing any more. Hal thinks fleetingly of how _smart_ you have to be to kiss really well, and then she loses herself in the moment, in the spice still sharp on his tongue, and the feel of him in her arms, so fine-boned and warm.

"_Oh_," she says when they move apart.

Near rests his forehead against hers for a moment, wearing that little smile that maybe only Hal can see the sweetness in. "Thank you."


End file.
